What is the historical mystery behind "Cao Chong weighed the elephant"?

So, is there a better way? There is, that is to use a bucket to fill the cabin with water. Because the water is on the side of the boat, it is relatively convenient to fill the cabin with water. In fact, Cao Chong's approach is not the most labor-saving and effective. But he was, after all, a small child of only a few years old, so too much harshness was not necessary. But Cao Cao, as the prime minister of the Han Dynasty, was too "interested" to "tell people to do what Cao Chong said".

But is it really like the story? Let's look at the history books is how to record --

Charge said: "placed on top of the elephant boat, and carve its water marks to, say things to carry, then the school can be known." Taizu was very pleased, that is, to implement.

See, "Three Kingdoms" in the Cao Chong just said "the same weight of other small things loaded onto the boat", as for the boat specifically loaded with what, and did not say clearly, not to mention "to the boat loaded with stones". Therefore, the plot of "loading stones into the boat", I am afraid that the later interpretation and fabrication.

Whether he was seven years old or younger at the time

There is another difference between Cao Chong's elephant weighing text and the history books. The traditional story describes that when the elephant was weighed, "Cao Cao's son, Cao Chong, was seven years old." But in the history books, Cao Chong was five or six years old when the elephant was weighed. Moreover, the age of seven in the story is a weekly age, while the age of five or six in the history book is an imaginary age. Cao Chong was only four or five years old at the time, according to the weekly age.

So why did they change Cao Chong's age to be older? This is most likely because the duplicators felt that a four or five year old could not possibly have such wisdom, and that even seven years old would have been smart enough. This adjustment of age is certainly justified.

Cao Chong's method of weighing the elephants did show great wisdom. He had to know, first of all, that the heavier the ship's load, the deeper the portion of the ship's side that was not in the water; the lighter the ship's load, the shallower the portion of the ship's side that was not in the water. He also needs to know that the portion of the side of a boat that is not in the water is the same for a large weight and for many small weights, if they are loaded in the same boat, provided that the weights are equal. The sum of the weights of all these small objects loaded in the same boat is equal to the weight of the large object loaded in the same boat. All of this, I'm afraid, is still hard to understand for young children still playing in kindergarten today.

It would be very different if they were 7 years old. Today, a 7-year-old is in second grade, has learned addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and has much more life experience, so of course his IQ is much higher. But even so, it would be difficult for a 7-year-old to come up with this method of weighing elephants out of thin air without practical experience of his own, and without the benefit of similar experience of his predecessors.

In fact, a child prodigy is nothing more than a high IQ, but IQ is not the same as wisdom. IQ is innate, wisdom is acquired. Wisdom is not imagined, but gained from the contemplation of experience. Experience includes both one's own practical experience and the borrowing of the experience of those who have gone before. The same goes for the wisdom of weighing elephants. It is unlikely that Cao Chong, who was four or five years old, would have had such a wealth of practical experience himself. It is unlikely that he would have been able to come up with it without drawing on the experience of others, just by his own intelligence.

Whether or not he drew on King Zhao of Yan's "pontoon boat" to weigh a pig

So, where did Cao Chong's wisdom in weighing elephants come from? Wu Zeng in the Southern Song Dynasty, "can change Zhai Rambling Records" Volume 2, "the beginning of the matter" category, has put forward this view -

Yi Note: "Fu Zi"

Said: "Shuo people offer King Zhao of Yan to the big boar, said to raise Xi Ruo. Make said: 'Boar also, not big rest does not live, not people will not cherish. This year hundred and twenty carry on, people called the boar fairy.' The king was ordered to raise the boar Zai, fifteen years, as big as a sandy grave, foot such as the body does not win. The king is different, make the weighing officer bridge and measure, folding ten bridge, boar is not measured. Order water officer pontoon boat and measure it, its weight thousands of pounds, its huge useless." Yun Yun. I know that the boat measurements, since Yan Zhaoshi has been this law, not started in Deng Ai Wang also.

During the Warring States period, a tribe in the north offered King Yan Zhaoge a huge pig. The messenger who offered the pig said that the pig's name was Yang Xi Ruo, and that it was 120 years old and was known as the "Boar Immortal". King Zhao of Yan sent a pig-raising official to keep the pig, but after 15 years, the pig was as big as a sand dune, and its four legs could not support its body, so it had to sit all day long.

King Zhao of Yan ordered the official in charge of weights and measures to weigh the pig. At first, the officials in charge of weighing brought ten of the largest scales, each of which could weigh 500 pounds, so that the ten scales could weigh up to 5000 pounds. They used many ropes to cover the pig, and then the hooks of the ten scales were hung on different ropes, and each scale was lifted by two strong young men. However, not only were the 20 young men unable to lift it, but the ten scales could not be struck. The official in charge of the scale brought ten more scales, two scales for each big scale. In this way, one big scale could weigh 1,000 pounds, and ten big scales could weigh 10,000 pounds. However, the crowd still could not lift it. As a result of too much force, the poles of the ten big scales were broken.

King Yan Zhaoge asked his ministers what other ways they could weigh the pig. The water official said he could use a "floating boat" to weigh the pig, that is, a boat. King Yan Zhaowang adopted this approach, and eventually was able to weigh the pig "its weight of a thousand pounds". A jun is 30 pounds, and a thousand jun is 30,000 pounds. The weight of the pig may have been an obvious exaggeration, but the method of weighing a pig by boat is similar to that of weighing an elephant by boat.

The ancient book "Fu Zi" only says that the water officer used a boat to weigh the big pig, but it is not clear how to use the boat to weigh. Maybe it is written in other ancient books, but today it has been lost; maybe it is not written in other ancient books, it depends on the level of human learning.

Cao Chong's education must have been the best at that time. His teacher must have been a great scholar who knew everything about the past and the present, and probably told Cao Chong the story of how to weigh a pig with a boat. Therefore, Cao Chong knew how to weigh an elephant by the same method of weighing a pig. Therefore, it can be roughly inferred that Cao Chong's wisdom in weighing elephants came from borrowing from the experience of his predecessors, rather than relying on the intelligence of a child prodigy alone to come up with it.